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Coriant makes 100G connection to UNINETT’s Arctic research base

UNINETT, a non-profit provider of telecom and data network connections to Norwegian universities and research institutions, is to link the international research community of Ny-Ålesund with Longyearbyen on the Svalbard archipelago via a new 100G-capable subsea optical transport infrastructure.

Eleven institutions from 10 countries have established permanent research stations in Ny-Ålesund to create the northernmost research station in the world. An increase in research activities, including plans for a new astronomical research observatory, is driving the need for higher network capacities. Among the research and education applications requiring reliable, high-speed connectivity is real-time and near-real time astronomy data transmission.

The 100G subsea link will be provided by Coriant, and will include the vendor’s hiT 7300 multi-haul transport platform managed by Coriant’s Transport Network Management System (TNMS). The Coriant hiT 7300 long-haul/ultra-long-haul platform will serve as submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE), providing UNINETT with coherent 100G connectivity between Ny-Ålesund and Longyearbyen a distance of approximately 260 kilometres under the Arctic Ocean.

“High-speed global collaboration and real-time exchange of media-rich data and applications are critical to research and educational institutions, and serve as the life blood of research communities like Ny-Ålesund,” said Vidar Faltinsen, chief technology officer, UNINETT. “In order help us achieve our goal of bringing our customers state-of-the art broadband communications, we needed a proven technology partner that could deliver a highly reliable and flexible DWDM solution, with the service expertise to support network deployment and service commissioning in Svalbard’s particularly harsh environment. Coriant proved the ideal partner on all fronts.”

The new network is designed to maximise utilisation of deployed fibre resources and deliver reliable wavelength and sub-wavelength services to a large end-user community, including more than 200 Norwegian research and educational institutions and more than 300,000 users. With advanced optical link control and GMPLS-based restoration capabilities, Coriant’s hiT 7300 platform delivers optimal optical performance, stability, and availability, which is particularly important in operating environments with dynamic change, such as unrepeated and unamplified subsea applications.

Following the deployment, UNINETT will be able to scale optical transmission capacity and meet the low-latency connectivity requirements of demanding, high-bandwidth scientific research and education traffic and applications in a cost-efficient way.

BT has made an offer to the UK government to voluntarily provide high-speed broadband to 99 per cent all homes and businesses across the country within five years, which would largely be delivered by Openreach.

The government said it received the offer after it committed to introduce a Universal Service Obligation (USO) through regulation to give every home and business in the UK the right to request a high-speed connection of at least 10Mb/s.